"Plato in The Republic has Socrates warn about the difficulty of ever attaining real truth. Socrates’ metaphor of the three beds illustrates the problem of the degeneration from the ideal to the banal: the first bed made by God is the Platonic ideal; a carpenter then makes a second bed in imitation of that ideal bed; and the artist subsequently makes a third bed in imitation of the carpenter’s imitation of the ideal bed. Subsequent imitators then capture less and less of the ideal. They might graze the reality of a carpenter making a bed or of an artist painting a carpenter making a bed, but they can never attain the true ideal of the original creation. " http://www.greanvillepost.com/2011/04/20/mimesis-and-the-state-of-us-democracy/
Aristotle
Socrates
Phaedrus
xxx
"The Republic" by Plato
Compare the "Allegory of the Cave" with "The Country of the Blind"
"Plato in The Republic has Socrates warn about the difficulty of ever attaining real truth. Socrates’ metaphor of the three beds illustrates the problem of the degeneration from the ideal to the banal: the first bed made by God is the Platonic ideal; a carpenter then makes a second bed in imitation of that ideal bed; and the artist subsequently makes a third bed in imitation of the carpenter’s imitation of the ideal bed. Subsequent imitators then capture less and less of the ideal. They might graze the reality of a carpenter making a bed or of an artist painting a carpenter making a bed, but they can never attain the true ideal of the original creation. "
http://www.greanvillepost.com/2011/04/20/mimesis-and-the-state-of-us-democracy/